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Progress, not perfection…right?

Day 93

Sure, but I’m a perfectionist. I admit this and I also admit that there are days where my desire for perfection cripples me. I want to be first, better, stronger, thinner, more successful, more popular, kinder, more giving, a better friend, a kinder spouse, a more impactful aunty, you get the idea.

My husband bought me my first DSLR camera in 2009 and I didn’t learn how to use it until I started this project. I found photography hard, I couldn’t understand ISO and didn’t get why upping it meant my photos would be “noisy”, what the hell? I knew what I wanted my pictures to convey, what I was trying to capture, but no matter how much I read, manipulated settings or tried, I failed and failure for me is not acceptable. So I put the camera down and left it down.

We all have journeys that we’re on in this life, and part of my journey requires that I slow down, take things a day at a time, practice gratitude, stay in the here and now and I’ve been doing that for a pretty long time with success in almost all areas of my life. For some reason I couldn’t accept that my photography efforts were less than stellar and so I kept quitting. I couldn’t slow down, be in the moment, focus on the positives, I just got frustrated and quit, but even after quitting I would berate myself and get mad for being mad and for quitting…

I still don’t know why that was my experience and I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that today I try, sometimes I fail or end up with a photo I don’t love, but I keep reading, studying, learning. I spend at least an hour a day looking at other folk’s blogs, and I read about their triumphs and failures all with the goal of enjoying this part of my journey.

Today while freezing my butt off on the side of a mountain, realizing I forgot Kleenex, had the wrong lens and wore the wrong gloves, I laughed and let the gratitude of being in that moment take over. I love this shot, not because it’s perfect, but rather because it reminds me to just keep on keeping on…